The Gift in the Iliad

Tyler Jordan, The University of Western Ontario

Abstract

In this thesis I challenge the dominant conception of gift giving in the Iliad. In Chapter 1 I show that the textual evidence does not support the idea that different categories of gift giving are denoted by word choice. In Chapter 2, I show that modern theories are not able to explain perfectly the instances of gift giving in the Iliad. Furthermore, I show that the use or avoidance of gift-terms in the poem can carry meaning. In Chapter 3, I take the conclusions from the previous two chapters and apply them to a focused analysis of the exchange between Diomedes and Glaukos in Iliad 6, showing that the language of the scene can allow us to analyse the exchange as more than only an instance of gift giving.